ABSTRACT
Introduction: Orotracheal intubation is one of the medical skills that has gained the most importance for the management of the airway of hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms. Objective: To determine the number of videolaryngoscopies that the operator must perform to master orotracheal intubation with videolaryngoscope. Methods: A longitudinal and prospective study was carried out, where the learning process of an anesthesiology specialist was evaluated to determine the reduction in the time they needed to perform an orotracheal intubation in COVID-19 positive patients with respiratory distress. Results: The anesthesiologist with no experience in the use of the Airtraq® videolaryngoscope achieved a learning rate of 86.98% within the first 10 interventions (p < 0.05), leading to a constant decrease in time in each procedure until reaching their mastery. Conclusions: The practice of orotracheal intubation facilitates that with a greater number of intubated patients, a significant decrease in the time required for this technique can be obtained, reducing the transient hypoxia of the patient in apnea due to COVID-19, being the number of repetitions of the procedure a more important factor than the difficulty of the cases. © 2022 Sociedad de Anestesiologia de Chile. All rights reserved.